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Is it Canada’s responsibility to protect its citizens abroad?

Ottawa has hired two buses to shepherd 185 of its citizens out of Japan’s nuclear disaster zone, a modest effort that will likely cost the Canadian taxpayer very little.

Yet the question of whether Ottawa is doing enough — or too much — to assist those wanting to leave is becoming a contentious issue.

On Thursday, Lorne Spry, a Vancouver man who has spent the last 18 years teaching in Japan, told the Vancouver Sun he felt the Canadian government had “abandoned” its citizens to a potential nuclear catastrophe.

But critics and taxpayer lobbyists argue Canadians who live in foreign countries and pay taxes there don’t deserve an all-expenses-paid rescue during times of crisis. In the past, they’ve branded people like Spry and other longstanding expats as “citizens of convenience.”

Officially, the government has no clear policy for when it will or will not extract Canadians trapped in international disaster zones.

“Situations vary from country to country,” said Claude Rochon, spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

“In the event of a crisis that requires evacuation . . . policy is to provide transportation to Canadian travellers to the nearest safe haven.”

In Japan, that means a bus ride from Sendai to Tokyo Friday morning and nothing more.

“Canadians wishing to leave Japan can do so by commercial means,” said Rochon.

Meanwhile, France, the United States and other countries have chartered planes to evacuate their nationals from Tokyo.

“The government of Canada may assist Canadians in leaving a country as a last resort,” Rochon said. “However, doing so may not always be possible.”

In 2005, when the levies burst in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, a number of Canadians were stranded in the city. Calls for help poured into Foreign Affairs, many requesting that the military extract the Canadians. Such an evacuation never occurred.

But during the Lebanon war in 2006, Ottawa spent nearly $100 million pulling Canadian passport holders out of the war zone only to be slammed by critics when many of those passport holders returned to their homes in Lebanon once the violence subsided.

The current evacuation effort in Japan comes just two days after Stephen Harper advised that taxpayers would not be footing the bill to evacuate Canadians out of Japan.

But fears of a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant have worsened since Harper’s statements.

Sixteen Canadians were bused out of the Fukushima region on Thursday travelling on buses supplied by South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Britain.

“Most Canadians would be shocked to learn that the government has no legislative responsibility to protect Canadians abroad,” says MP Paul Dewar, the NDP’s foreign affairs critic.

“It’s a glaring hole in our law . . . . Our staff in the missions abroad do their best to serve Canadians. But they are always understaffed and under-resourced.”

Whether the government should be obliged to protect Canadians in foreign lands during times of peril is a question that strikes at the rights of citizenship.

“This is the duty to protect, and it is a fundamental attribute of government,” says Bob Bothwell of the University of Toronto’s International Relations program. “A government that does not protect its citizens loses its legitimacy.”

But what about those “citizens of convenience?”

“Last time I checked, a Canadian is a Canadian,” says Liberal MP Dan McTeague, former parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs, with special emphasis on Canadians Abroad.

“We tend to discredit the good number of Canadians abroad. I’m not sure what’s to gain from this. Is there going to be an expense (in rescuing them)? Sure there is. But that’s part of the expense of citizenship.”

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